Terrence Howard Quotes

Hereafter in the enlistment of men in the Army... no distinction whatsoever shall be made on account of race or color

At the end of the day, I think my story is, we need black officers because African-Americans need a fair shot at good jobs in this country, but we cannot expect them and should not expect them to change the nature of policing.

I had talked to my agent a lot over the years about not being interested in stereotypical "black films" [because] I didn't like the way they were representing black people over and over and over again in the same way.

Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black.

We want to make sure people know deeply about the trans community and deeply about Black Lives Matter so that people can act in solidarity.

Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people.

Our [black people's] path is clear: We refuse to be inferior. We want to be exactly what Allah (God) has desired for us to be and we can't be that in their [white people's] house. We either have to take over their house or go and build a house of our own.

I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show . . . What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one. And they don't recognize comedy, and you don't see a lot of black people nominated, so why should I watch it?

I always emphasize the historic role of people of color in organizing and protesting to achieve justice.

If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. ... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... Your interference is doing him positive injury.

People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.

You don't pick black actors or black directors because they are black. You pick them because they are good. If you lend somebody 50 million dollars you want you're money back. You don't care if they are oppressed. You just want you're money back.

Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was. And if he saw that poor and working people were not at the center of public policy, he would be deeply, deeply upset.

Ultimately the social change has to come from the people who make the movies, so the people who make the movies have to look at the landscape and say to themselves, "Well, you know, these things are changing, and I'm okay with their having changed, and I think it's okay to start reflecting those changes through the movies we make."

If I had to choose between baseball’s Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.

Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings.

The fact that's why the prisons and stock in private prisons rose the very day after the election results [for Donald Trump] were announced. The fact that progress that was made for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ people, are all at risk.

There are many white people in this country who realize that the system itself - as it is constructed - is not so constructed that it can produce freedom and equality for the negro, and the system has to be changed.

I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.

It's a great wake-up call for our entire industry: What movies are we making? What storytellers are we allowing to tell the stories? What people are we allowing to be cast in those stories? I think we need newer stories, and more people given the opportunity to do anything they want.

We have African-Americans and black people getting behind the scenes more and more, we get true black images in television and film...because we have black people behind them. They can tell stories from those points of view and bring to life those characters who have yet to be shown. As long as we have people behind the camera just as much as in front of the camera doing the work, then we'll always be good.

When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia - which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.